Aaron White

http://icantdeci.de retires today. It was a fun ride!

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:00:49 -0400

http://icantdeci.de retires today. It was a fun ride!

APH Love Shine by cirno, made at DoInk.com Cirno is only 14! Her...

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:57:25 -0400

APH Love Shine by cirno, made at DoInk.com

Cirno is only 14! Her style, composition & eye for detail blow me away.

Instapaper + Kindle

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:32:00 -0400

I’ve been drowning in RSS for months now. At first I needed to mark each shiny new post as ‘read’, but this quickly devolved into the “hit the spacebar quickly” game; articles worth reading were skimmed as readily as the news fodder.

I was aware of Marco Arment’s Instapaper, a tool to bookmark articles as “interesting to read when you have the time”. Today I learned that it can send weekly digests to my Kindle. I’m in heaven.

Marco, I have one question for you: how do you get paid for this flow? While I have an iPhone, I don’t really need the Instapaper app… though I’m willing to pay you $5 just the same. What’s your preference?

Pop Morality

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:09:20 -0400

I’m no fan of infidelity, but it’s no surprise to me that the kind of personality that succeeds in politics is the kind of personality that is susceptible to ‘tasting the fruits of power’.

What interests me more than the affairs of the Governor from South Carolina, is the answer to this question:

What happens to our popular notion of morality when the Facebook generation grows up? When every person on earth is tagged in a photo a) drunk b) stoned c) compromised?

Clearly, we’re going to drop quite a bit of pretense. What else are we going to lose & gain?

(via davemorin) An application of Microsoft’s Project...

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:16:00 -0400

(via davemorin)

An application of Microsoft’s Project Natal, for the XBox.

This is mind-blowing stuff. Peter Molyneux has a history of aiming high, and while some would argue his results are mixed, personally I feel he always manages to capture the essence of something amazing with each game he releases, even if the framework surrounding it doesn’t weather quite as well.

This video is beautiful & compelling. Maybe this is where...

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:08:41 -0400

This video is beautiful & compelling. Maybe this is where I’ll be visiting or living in 2030? (via Jay Neely)

Abcx3 3D Cookie by abcx3, made at DoInk.com I’ve...

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:04:26 -0400

Abcx3 3D Cookie by abcx3, made at DoInk.com

I’ve posted about the ingenuity of the users on DoInk before, and I can’t help but write again. Here is an example of a 3D rotating cookie… made in our 2D animation package. What’s especially amazing, is that this isn’t ‘hand-drawn’ (ie: frame-by-frame). Abcx3 has figured out how to reproduce rotating 3D objects consistently. There’s not a line of source-code I’m not familiar with, and yet it’s beyond me how he’s doing this.

Go DoInk!

fred-wilson: this is very cool. scratching the table to control...

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:25:28 -0400

fred-wilson: this is very cool. scratching the table to control your computer.

Agreed, I love how low-tech ingenious this is!

"To succeed, surround yourself with people smarter than you; thankfully this gets easier as you get..."

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:28:40 -0400

“To succeed, surround yourself with people smarter than you; thankfully this gets easier as you get older.”

Apollo by scrii, made at DoInk.com I’ve been having...

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:45:20 -0400

Apollo by scrii, made at DoInk.com

I’ve been having bloggers-block lately, so, here’s a DoInker’s rendition of the problem!

Project Natal Motion Sensing Controller for XBOX 360...

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:41:00 -0400

Project Natal Motion Sensing Controller for XBOX 360 (via zachklein)

This is really exciting stuff, and honestly, if it’s even half as smooth as the video suggests, we’re arriving into a future of human-computer interfaces that I thought was still more than a decade out.

(Shout out to smart folks from my alma mater. Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon HCI PhD, and famous for his Wii-mote hacks, is one of the big brains behind Natal)

Cloud Computing Panel, June 4th

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:36:00 -0400

Next Thursday, June 4th, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion, The State of Startups Using Cloud Computing (please register if you can attend)

The event will be held at the Vilna Shul (in Beacon Hill) from 6:00pm till 8.

If you’re in Boston, interested in cloud computing, doing cloud computing, or eager to learn about it, I invite you to attend! The event is free, there will be some great discussion, and the opportunity to meet some great people in the Boston startup space.

Hope to see you there.

We did it! This morning I completed my first half-marathon with...

Sun, 24 May 2009 17:16:00 -0400

We did it! This morning I completed my first half-marathon with two great friends; official time: 2:03:11. (Check out the RunKeeper map, including mile by mile time splits, here)

Unsurprisingly, I’m very excited about the accomplishment (especially considering how I lurched my way through a 5k this past Thanksgiving)

A few fun things I’d like to highlight:

First, RunKeeper is a fantastic iPhone app & site. I tracked the majority of my outdoor runs, and got great insight into my pace which helped motivate consistency in my training. Early on into this endeavor, the RK development team rolled out Twitter integration, which tweeted every run on completion.

Thanks to the tweet feature, my friend Carla (left) was inspired to join in the training; we had some truly epic runs together! Also, my long-time friend Casey (right) was roped into the race in the eleventh hour. The power of social technology!

So when I say we did it, I’d like to thank Carla, Casey, and RunKeeper! Great race, gang, heres to the next!

Is The Customer Always Right?

Fri, 22 May 2009 15:09:00 -0400

No. (seems pretty obvious)

However, your customer’s behavior (specifically, in aggregate) is infallible.

LOST Recap: Starting Over

Thu, 14 May 2009 15:00:00 -0400

LOST Recap: Starting Over:

Great analysis LOST’s season 5 finale.

The author provides some great insights, and thematic elements I hadn’t considered.

Well worth the read if you are a LOST fan.

Becoming what I’ve feared most…

Mon, 11 May 2009 19:34:08 -0400

Becoming what I’ve feared most…

A Perfect Storm

Sun, 10 May 2009 02:09:00 -0400

Tonight’s series of events culminated in a “perfect storm”: everything about it went wrong, in just the right way.

My friend Carla and I have been training (somewhat haphazardly) for what will be our first half-marathon. Realizing we are a bit behind schedule for our Memorial Day race, Carla smartly encouraged doing a boundary-pushing run tonight.

She bought new shoes, we made our playlists, and began a beautiful evening run around the Charles river. Launching from Harvard square, we left everything ‘unnecessary’ (wallet, keys, cash) in my car. Whoops.

Around mile 4 on the Longfellow bridge, the weather turned. “Do we keep running in the rain,” we wondered. Without access to the T, cabs, etc, the decision was made for us.

Bound in, we bound on.

Mile 6 the rain turns to intense downpour. Running devolves to slogging through puddles, puddles that we could no longer distinguish from our waterlogged sneakers, shorts, skin or bone.

Finally back on the river, mile 7 added startling lightning & thunder to the mix. Since we couldn’t become anymore wet or exhausted, we opt to skip shelter a second time.

Harvard comes back into sight at mile 8, and the sky clears. We end our 8.3 mile run with some stretching before driving off….

Someone forgot to close his sunroof.

Causalities of the run? One new pair of sneakers, now thoroughly broken in, perhaps a leather seat or two, and the ear-piece to my iPhone (however, I’m hopeful)

Carla and I are unfazed. It was the longest run for the both of us, and it was far more memorable than we might have guessed. I’m confident we can handle the race, rain or shine.

But please, someone remind me to check my sunroof!

special thanks to Starbucks for free ice-water. In spite being in a state of human-sponge, the drink hit a spot the rain couldn’t!

"Lamentably, I think this metric [of emphasizing a user’s popularity on a network] will come to..."

Fri, 08 May 2009 12:19:00 -0400

“Lamentably, I think this metric [of emphasizing a user’s popularity on a network] will come to define the experience for the next generation of social networks. I fear that the internet’s utility for many people will equate to constant awareness of one’s value, and the play of meaningless games to increase the sum.”

- Zach Klein on Tumblr’s new ‘Tumblarity’ metric.

I completely agree, but only insofar as this is the beginning of what’s to come. As more websites better motivate engagement through game-like mechanics, Zach’s scenario is very likely to play out. However, when most websites motivate engagement this way, people, who have finite time, will evaluate which metrics they want to optimize.

The metrics that bring them the most personal value, $ in bank account, social status, physical fitness, etc, ought to rise to the top. It’s this scenario that I really look forward to.

Kaikuro is one of my favorite artists on DoInk.com. She just...

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:22:38 -0400

Kaikuro is one of my favorite artists on DoInk.com. She just posted an awesome video recording of her drawing/animating process. It’s cool to see the use of raster techniques inside of DoInk’s vector editor. (When we designed it, we aimed to make it as accessible and familiar as MS-Paint, but powerful like Illustrator)

Very cool to see an artist at work! Bonus: she composed & performed the music in the video as well!

To the scant few of you sitting on the fence: THIS IS THE POWER...

Mon, 04 May 2009 22:47:39 -0400

To the scant few of you sitting on the fence: THIS IS THE POWER OF TWITTER. More seriously, thanks to @fandbo, @tibbon, @MaThurrell, @christieklisz, @prettyladycmu and @Loutraki3! I was curious about trying other meats in a can, and you guys have inspired me to get out of my tuna-rut!

(For some context, I achieved fitness goals, and am now working bulking up. You can follow my progress on Gyminee)